Reuters January 10, 2007
FACTBOX-Key facts on al Qaeda hunted in Somalia
Jan 10 (Reuters) - The United States made its first admitted military intervention in Somalia since 1994, launching on Monday an air strike on a southern area where wanted al Qaeda suspects are said to be hiding among fugitive Somali Islamists.
The United States believes hardline Islamists for years harboured three al Qaeda members wanted for their roles in either the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and/or the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned resort hotel on the Kenyan coast.
Here are key facts about the top three among a handful thought to be there:
FAZUL ABDULLAH MOHAMMED: Mohammed is on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted list of terrorists, and there is a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. The U.S. government has indicted him in federal court for his alleged involvement in the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings, which killed 224 people.
Born in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros, Mohammed is believed to be between 32 and 34 years old. He is a holder of Kenyan nationality after he spent time teaching in an Islamic school near Lamu on the primarily Muslim coast of Kenya. He is said to be a master of disguise, bomb-making and forgery, carries numerous passports, speaks five languages and has a fondness for baseball caps and casual clothes.
He also appears on the U.N.'s al Qaeda and Taliban sanctions list, where he was placed by the United States shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
ABU TALHA AL-SUDANI:
A Sudanese identified in evidence given against Osama bin Laden as an explosives expert, Al-Sudani is said by Western and regional intelligence experts to be the leader of east Africa's al Qaeda cell. The International Crisis Group, quoting Somali counter-terrorism sources, said he is reported to have married a Somali woman and settled in Mogadishu. Reports are in conflict over when he first went there, but some say it was in 1993 -- when the United States was in Somalia in a doomed peacekeeping mission and bin Laden first claimed his militants had a hand in shooting down U.S. helicopters in the Black Hawk Down incident. Most have disregarded that claim.
The United States believes he financed and directed the 2002 hotel bombing in Kenya.
He ordered Gouled Hassan Dourad, one of 14 detainees held at secret facilities and transferred to Guantanamo Bay last year, to scout out the U.S. Horn of Africa counter-terrorism base in Djibouti in 2003 in preparation for a bomb attack there, according to the U.S. Director for National Intelligence.
SALEH ALI SALEH NABHAN: The FBI says the 27-year-old Kenyan is wanted for questioning in connection with the 2002 bomb attack on the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel on the Kenyan coast, which killed at least 14, and a simultaneous but botched missile attack on an Israeli airliner leaving nearby Mombasa airport.
He is believed to have owned the truck driven into the hotel, and then to have taken shelter in Somalia with the help of members of Al-Itihaad Al-Islaami, or alumni of the Somali militant group operating under a different name.
(Sources: International Crisis Group, Globalsecurity.org, the FBI and Interpol websites, and Reuters reporting)
(Reporting by Bryson Hull in Nairobi and Mark Trevelyan in London)
© Copyright 2007, Reuters
